The final balance-sheet, 1908-9, was as follows, after allowing for the following: Loss of revenue from reduction of sugar duty, 3,400,000l., and from reduction on marine insurance policies from January 1, 1909, 20,000l.; and increased expenditure for payment of cost of collection of transferred licences, 40,000l., and for old age pensions from January 1, 1909, 1,200,000ʊ. Mr. Austen Chamberlain commented on the exceptional importance of the Budget, and promised that the old age pension scheme would be criticised in no unfriendly spirit, for the question had to be dealt with in some form. He believed a compulsory and contributory scheme might have been framed successfully; and he feared that the Government scheme might benefit the undeserving. He doubted whether the year had been really one of general prosperity, apart from mining and the textile trades, laid stress on the decline of Excise receipts, which were then stationary, and, after some further comments, questioned the advisability of leaving nothing of the revenue for next year's increased expenditure on the Navy and in other departments. Subsequently Mr. Chaplin declared that since Mr. Gladstone's great Budgets he had heard no more able exposition than Mr. Asquith's speech. Several Liberal members eulogised the Budget and Old Age Pensions, but Mr. A. Henderson (Barnard Castle, Durham), leader of the Independent Labour party, was dissatisfied with the proposed age-limit, and there was some criticism of the details, while Sir F. Banbury (City of London) took a gloomy view of the condition of the national finances. Eventually the Income Tax resolution was reserved, and the other resolutions incidental to the Budget were passed. It had been stated that Old Age Pensions would be the subject of a separate Bill. The Budget was received by the Liberal Press with enthusiasm, as a triumph of Free-Trade finance. Tariff Reform RAR OF THE ERSITY G 2 organs had predicted that Mr. Asquith must either forego Old Age Pensions or maintain the sugar duties, and had been mistaken. The Opposition Press argued that large expenditure would be necessary next year to keep pace with the growth of the German navy, and possibly to extend the old age pension scheme, and expressed confidence that this could only be provided through Tariff Reform. This view was shared by the Free-Trade and Unionist Spectator, which endorsed the Daily Mail's neat phrase, "a Budget of post obits." The Budget, however, was favourably regarded in the City and by the leading financial organs. The Statist and Economist held that the increased expenditure would be made up largely out of increased revenue, and the latter looked also for a revision of license duties and a reduction of national expenditure in 1909. It was possibly owing to Mr. Balfour's absence through illness that no criticism of Ministerial finance was offered at the annual meeting of the Primrose League at the Albert Hall (May 8). Earl Percy and Mr. Joynson Hicks, who were the principal speakers, dwelt mainly on the education question, the Licensing Bill, and the Ministerial concessions to the Nationalists, and held that the bye-elections afforded grounds of hope for a speedy Unionist triumph. The supporters of the Government, however, were encouraged by the return of Mr. Churchill at Dundee (May 9) by an unexpectedly large majority, in spite of the active opposition of a Labour candidate (Mr. G. H. Stuart, Secretary of the Postmen's Federation) and of a Prohibitionist, as well as of the women suffragists. One of these, however, Miss Malony, of the Women's Freedom League, repelled sympathy by ringing a bell in order to drown Mr. Churchill's voice and extort an apology from him for a statement he had made respecting the suffragists' conduct at Peckham. The difficulties caused to the jute industry of Dundee by foreign duties and the competition of unregulated labour in the Calcutta factories were made the most of by the Unionist and Labour candidates respectively, and the shipbuilding lock-out (post, p. 111) was expected to tell in favour of the Labour candidate. But Mr. Churchill's majority over the Unionist was 2,709, and the Labour vote was only 4,014, more than 3,000 below the Liberal total (see Part II., Chronicle, p. 13). At Montrose, three days later, Mr. Robert Harcourt, brother of the First Commissioner of Works, was returned by 3,083 votes against 1,937 given to the Labour and 1,576 to the Unionist candidate, whose poll was less than in 1906. Mr. Churchill's declaration on Home Rule at Manchester (p. 84) had caused much comment; but Mr. Asquith, in reply to a question from Mr. Long on April 30, had declared that there had been no change of policy, and that the President of the Board of Trade had made no statement inconsistent with the previous declarations of Ministers. Four days later, in reply to Mr. Campbell (Dublin University), the Prime Minister said that what the President of the Board of Trade had said, with his approval, was that though it was impossible now to determine what issue would be before the country at the next general election, the disabling pledge given by himself and others only applied to the existing Parliament; at its expiration the Liberal party would claim a perfectly free hand to deal with the whole problem of Irish Government. He added, in reply to Mr. Byles, that the opinion of the party and the Government had been expressed in the amended resolution of March 30. It was, therefore, only natural that the Government should. accept the Bill for the repeal of the Crimes Act, 1887, popularly known as the Coercion Act, when its second reading was moved by Mr. Haviland Burke (Tullamore, King's County) on May 8. Mr. Burke contrasted the Act with the promise of equal treatment for Ireland and England, made at the time of the Conservative and Irish coalition of 1885 against the renewal of parts of the Peace Preservation Act. In England, he added, such an Act might render a strike impossible. The landgrabber was worse than the blackleg. The Act was defended, amid some interruption, by Mr. Butcher and other Irish Unionist members as a non-political means of expressing exceptional lawlessness. Mr. Birrell declared that the Liberal party had always regarded the Act as intolerable. It created new offences; there was no real analogy between its procedure and that of Scotland, as was often contended; it gave a special weapon to the Executive, as in unconstitutional countries like Russia. It had been dormant since 1903; the cruel cases of boycotting now numbered 12 or 13, the minor cases 125 or 130, and the Act would not put them down. Cattledriving was a stupid thing, but the Government relied on the ordinary law for its suppression. Taking a bird's-eye view of the whole of Ireland, it was a peaceful and law-abiding country. These arguments were combated by Mr. Long (Dublin S.), and, after other speeches, the debate, at times warm, was closured by 209 to 96, and the second reading carried by 201 to 77. The Bill was, however, dropped in the autumn session. More substantial satisfaction was offered to Irish demands by the second reading of the Irish Universities Bill on May 11. An adverse resolution, moved and seconded by two English Liberals, Mr. A. Hutton (Morley, W.R. Yorks) and Dr. Hazel (West Bromwich,) condemned it by implication as strengthening denominational interests, and expressed a belief that the interests of truth and the welfare of the nation demanded an entirely free atmosphere. The mover declared that the new universities would be theological pens, and that the Government were reverting to concurrent endowment. Mr. Redmond stated that Irish Catholics were willing to sink their differences and accept the Government scheme. He hoped, however, that a residential college would be provided for by an increase of the building grants. He did not see how the new universities could be described as denominational. The atmosphere might be, but it was so in all universities, even at Khartoum. The Catholics hoped to enlarge the scheme in Committee, but would do their best to get it passed. Mr. Haldane, speaking for the Government, doubted parenthetically whether a residential college was needed, and described the Bill as a response, not to a Catholic demand, but to a pressing educational claim, The Scottish universities had a Presbyterian atmosphere, and in London University there was King's College. He contrasted the lamentable state of things in Ireland with the recent progress in England, and declared that the only touch of denominationalism in the Bill was that the governing bodies, while laymen, would be persons who might be trusted to secure that their students should not be exposed to teaching directly hostile to their religious faith. The affiliated colleges in the Bill were on a par with the schools of the University of London. The federal system had been condemned by the Duke of Devonshire's Committee, and the teaching university remained the accepted type. Ireland was deprived at present of the highest education; the opponents of the Bill should put forward an alternative. Later, Mr. Campbell (Dublin University), while condoling with Mr. Birrell for his compulsory acceptance of denominationalism, accepted the Bill, but with reserve. It was opposed by Mr. Sloan (Belfast, S.) and Mr. C. J. O'Donnell (Walworth), the latter, a Roman Catholic, urging that his co-religionists should study with Protestants, as in Germany; and it received the support of various Irish members and of Lord Edmund Talbot, an English Roman Catholic. Mr. Gordon (Londonderry, S.) opposed it; Sir Edward Carson (Dublin University) cordially welcomed it, reminding the Opposition that it had the support of Mr. Balfour (who was ill), and hoping that the new universities would one day combine with Trinity College into one great national university. Mr. Birrell said that this last speech had made him a happy man. The measure was now certain to pass. Some of the Ulster members had denied that Belfast wanted a university, but Dr. Dill, the President of Queen's College, had made out a case for it in The Times (May 11). He had taken every step to keep out denominationalism; if, after all, the new universities became sectarian, they must have denominational universities or none at all. He attached much importance to the ultimately elective character of the governing bodies, and commended the generosity of the Roman Catholic Bishops in consenting to rely for their representation on these upon the votes of the graduates. Affiliation was a necessary power, and there was every indication that the new bodies would be chary in using it. After a bitter attack on Liberal inconsistency from Mr. Moore (Antrim, N.) the amendment was rejected by 352 to 38. The debate was then closured on a division and the Bill read a second time by 344 to 31, the minority comprising English Liberals of various shades and English and Ulster Unionists. A number of Unionists were in the majority. A motion by Sir E. Carson to refer it to a Committee of the whole House was opposed by the Government and defeated by 311 to 50. Next day the Commons were occupied with an English measure of reform. The Housing and Town Planning Bill, introduced without explanation on March 26, was debated and read a second time. Mr. Burns moved the second reading in a speech full of information on the conditions of urban and rural life. The Bill, he said, aimed at abolishing slums, monotonous roads, and model barrack dwellings, and would help local authorities by inspection, advice, and guidance from the central authority. The population, he showed, was rapidly becoming more urban, and overcrowding was bad in the towns-especially in mining centres-and relatively worse in the counties. In London 14 per cent., in Glasgow 26 per cent. of the population lived in one room; in Berlin, however, the figure was 50 per cent., and in all diseases due to congestion of population London was better off than foreign towns. There had been great progress in housing of late years at Bournville, Port Sunlight and elsewhere; the Bill would enable other people and associations to do likewise. Towns could no longer be allowed to grow up unmethodically, and the Bill provided, failing agreement, for conference, and ultimately for compulsion by the central body. After commenting on the results of unmethodical building in the past among them the 50,000 basement houses then empty in London-he cited foreign examples of town planning, and effectively contrasted Voltaire's description of the centre of Paris with its actual state. The Bill proposed to make Part III. of the Housing Act of 1890 universally applicable without adoption, so that local authorities might build new houses without getting leave from the County Council; and to allow land to be acquired compulsorily on the terms of the Small Holdings Act of 1907. The Public Works Loan Commissioners would be empowered to grant loans to rural authorities for the purposes of the Bill for eighty years, the rate of interest not varying with the duration of the loan. Every County Council would be compelled to appoint a medical officer of health with full power over housing and inspections. The Bill would enable the Local Government Board to authorise a borough or urban district council to prepare a town planning scheme in or about the neighbourhood of their area; notice would be served on the landowners; they would come together, exchanges of land might be arranged, and recalcitrant owners might be bought out compulsorily. He was not dis |